| A redemptive song |

Prior to any insightful blogging, I need to give credit where it is due. A few weeks ago Lucas found an Icelandic artist named Ólafur Arnalds, and his music has changed my life. This has been especially true for my bus rides throughout the Czech countryside were made so much more meaningful with beautiful redemptive melodies flowing through the background of my thoughts and reflections.

Step One: Listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tvUPFsaj5s

Step Two: Read the rest of this blog.

Step Three (optional): Listen to it again while reading this blog. :)

Entering the Czech Republic was spiritually terrifying. It was a dark and gloomy place where religious and spiritual language are absent, where churches are few and far between, but where Satan is very much at work in the shadows and hiding places. The first repeated piano section speaks of this gloomy darkness.

Yet in the midst of this darkness, a redemptive melody begins. Enter God. Through long term and short term missionaries alike, God's redemptive song that He sings over us (Zephaniah 3:17) is beautiful and delicate; it dances and surges through our very beings.

The excitement begins to build; God is at work in the Czech Republic. A light is shining and the night is almost over. The dawn of a new day and a new beautiful story gives me hope. We are all moving to God's beat.

The melody changes. God has inspired His people to sing for joy and to pray. It seemed that at the outset of the trip we were a disconnected body of believers praying as many, but by the third day we were praying as one body; we were a single cohesive unit dancing and moving to God's harmony.

My heart broke for the fatherless at the orphanages. I long to be a dad, and I simply cannot fathom such a desertion. Such a scenario of abandonment stands in contrast to God's unfailing and unending love. It's a love that stretches beyond borders and barriers, to our very crumbled and ruined fragments that we call lives.

The week climaxes at the Sunday service and lunch that followed. Worship was beautiful. The Spirit was heavy in that place. Hearts were being formed and reformed. Tears and heavy hearts were in abundance. I know for myself I felt a deep hurt for this place, almost a pity. I'm not sure if God was laying this place on my heart to call me back to it one day, or if He was simply showing me that there are so many needs in this broken world He loves so much.

After the lunch, a string of goodbyes left us feeling incomplete, as though the journey was to be longer and we had so much left to do in Czech. We cried for the church in Czech. Our work will be laden with futility if the church will not follow up with the seeds that have been planted. The harvest is plenty but the workers are few in Czech. God is working in so many lives.

The melody fades and I'm left wondering if I had any impact at all. Were hearts really changed? Did God move in and through our lives?

The same piano that began the song ends it. Hopefully the apathetic and hopeless note that began the song will not be that which concludes it; it is with great hope in our hearts that we look back on such a beautiful and marvelous ten days. God is good. His redemption song is far beyond our understanding.

Thanks for reading.